Album Review: Picniclunch’s Yor Boy

It is always great to come home to find a package containing some new vinyl waiting outside my door. Most of the time it is something I half remember ordering while hammered, but on this particular day it happened to be the new record from New Bedford’s Picniclunch, called Yor Boy. I plopped the sucker on the turntable and immediately got flustered during the first track, “Mitch (At The Edge of the Void),” trying to figure out whether it was intended to be played at 33 or 45 RPM. It kind of works either way, but after repeating the song three times and listening to a little bit of the second track, I established that Yor Boy, much like about 94% of all full-length records, was intended to be played at 33 RPM.  

My first impressions of Yor Boy is that Picniclunch have this no wave starkness that reminded me immediately of bands like The Birthday Party and Teenage Jesus and The Jerks. “So Unavailable” has the feel of Jello Biafra singing a polka tune backed by a high school punk band at a very weird wedding. I’d like Picniclunch just for having a tune called “I’m A Beast” that acts as a war cry.  The music here is kind of rad too — like a train crash in waiting that somehow manages to make it around the next bend. “Clover” reminds me of first record Sonic Youth meets Silkworm fleshed out with an improvisational jazz feel. “Control Yrself” here jumps as the one with the buried pop hooks underneath the river of alternately tuned fuzz. “These Blue Eyes Are A Weapon” is probably the biggest rocker of the bunch in the unconventional lo-fi way that Picniclunch rock. I respect the originality that Picniclunch brought in the approach to Yor Boy, so for that I’m giving it a 7.1 — catch them Thursday, Jan 30 at AS220!

Picniclunch will be joining Black Beach, Joy Boys, and Charlie Dollard to rock the house at AS220 in PVD on Jan 30.   

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